Fighting poverty, armed with violins

El Sistema’s aim is to address a depressingly universal problem: how to remove children from poverty’s snares, like drugs, crime, gangs and desperation. The method, imagined by El Sistema’s founder, the economist and trained musician Jose Antonio Abreu, was classical music. Orchestras and music training centres around the country were established to occupy young people with music study and to instil values that can come from playing in ensembles: a sense of community, commitment and self-worth.

With nearly one-third of Venezuela’s population of 29 million under 14, the need is large.

Since the programme's founding, El Sistema estimates that it reaches 310,000 children in 280 teaching locations, called nucleos, said Eduardo Mendez, the executive director. About 500 orchestras and other ensembles, from preschool groups using paper cutouts of instruments to the world-class Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, fall under El Sistema’s umbrella. Abreu has said his goal is to reach 500,000 children by 2015.

The programme has become the envy of the music world, inspiring similar programmes in many countries and attracting influential proponents like the conductors Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle. It has prompted a number of books and documentaries, countless news reports and a steady flow of musicians and educators tramping through showcase nucleos.

The attention has made Sistema officials adept at playing host to visitors, who receive a warm but fairly controlled welcome, which is usually necessary in dangerous areas. These officials and Sistema fans speak in near mystical terms of Abreu and his programme’s results.

The populist government of Hugo Chavez is also happy with the programme, pouring 540 million bolivars, about US$64 million, a year into it. Foundations and donors add various amounts each year as well as gifts of instruments.

The Sarria nucleo, on the city’s northern edge, is housed in a prekindergartenthrough-sixth-grade school of 1,200. In an arrangement with the government it offers after-school activities from 2 to 6pm for 600 children.

Sarria embodies many of the principles that seem to make El Sistema so successful. All instruction and instruments are free. No child is turned away, teaching is done in groups, and many of the instructors have passed through El Sistema themselves (and are thus committed to the movement). Public performance is ingrained from the beginning. The nucleo is within walking distance of the students’ homes.

All performers are given medallions that have the image of a violin on one side and the motto “Tocar y Luchar”, “To Play and to Fight”, on the other.

“From the time they start playing and performing for others, they feel they are proud of what they are doing,” Mendez said.

The Sarria orchestra was in the final throes of rehearsing for a concert this week. The nucleo’s director, Alejandro Munoz, 32, was conducting. He is a stern figure who had already assigned some timeouts to talkative members. They were playing Handel’s Water Music and Alma Llanera, considered an unofficial Venezuelan anthem that every Sistema orchestra player learns.

“The main thing in our nucleos is the quality,” Mendez said. “We teach them with the best quality possible.”

Munoz, a violinist, was himself born in a barrio and passed through a nucleo. “My mother thought it would be a safe place,” he said. He was identified as a conducting prospect and sent to a conservatory.

At Sarria the beginning violin teacher was Ismenia Molina, 51, who was one of the earliest members of the first Sistema orchestra, giving her the aura of a founder. She has been with El Sistema for 33 of her 51 years.

El Sistema also has choirs and programmes to teach instrument-making and repair.

Things don’t always run smoothly in the programme. Tensions sometimes arise between Sistema officials and the administrators of the buildings they use. The programme’s growth sometimes outpaces the supply of teachers and instruments. Parents don’t always cooperate in getting children to rehearsals or lessons. Instruments are stolen in this crime-ridden country.

One fact sometimes overlooked is that Sistem'a is also open to people from middle-class or upper-middle-class families.

The Sarria nucleo’s founder, for instance, Rafael Elster, had a privileged upbringing. Abreu assigned him to set up the nucleo in 1999, and he spent 10 years there, suffering several armed robberies and the cleaning out of his house.

The majority of Sistema children do not go on to musical careers, but many come back and work for El Sistema anyway. Mendez, for instance, is a lawyer.

“Once you get touched by El Sistema,” he said, “you will never leave El Sistema.”

NYT